There’s more to your hotel website than promoting exclusive offers and advertising how amazing your property is — travelers are always on the lookout for the best resources that’ll fuel their wanderlust. How to make your hotel stand out from the rest? Create a dedicated blog section!
Any digital marketing agency can agree: filling your hotel website’s blog section with killer pieces of content is a surefire way to attract potential guests to your site. From a well-curated listicle of the best tourist spots to travel guides on off-the-beaten-path experiences, your goal is to serve as their best local resource. You want them to discover the city’s top destinations, activities, events, history, and culture while placing your hotel as the best choice for accommodation.
The problem is, creating an effective blog post is easier said than done. And yes, it’s not about the quantity, nor the quality of the articles per se. Even if a piece is well-written, readers may still have trouble staying engaged. Or worse, your blog’s beautiful post may be left unread, since it’s not optimized for search engines.
The key to a successful hotel blog is a thoughtful mix of creative and technical aspects. In this article, we’ll list down the common mistakes when writing a hotel blog post and how to avoid them.
1. Not creating a guest persona
Who are your ideal guests? An article about a fun, kid-friendly day trip might not work if the majority of your target audience is corporate travelers.
Before drafting a topic, create guest personas first. Examples include business travelers, families with kids, solo travelers, hen and stag guests, couples and honeymooners, etc. Then, determine their psychographics and behavioral traits, goals, and needs. From there, create killer blog topics that appeal to them and write in a way that resonates with them.
2. The topics aren’t that engaging
Put yourself in the shoes of a potential hotel guest who has no idea about your brand: would you be interested to read a lengthy post with statistics and charts about the hotel’s success? Or would you rather read a short but meaty travel guide, featuring the best local attractions in the city? Of course, we’ll go for the latter.
If you’re running out of content ideas, you could use the following:
- Local attractions (popular tourist spots, cultural attractions, heritage sites, hidden gems, natural wonders, parks, and gardens)
- Best things to do
- Itinerary suggestions
- Events and holidays
- Dining and leisure (best cafes, bars, restaurants, pubs, spas, shopping centres)
- Cultural trips (museums, galleries, nightlife districts)
- History and culture
- Target audience-specific articles
- Articles based on season
- Health and wellness
- Geo-targeted travel tips
- Visual content like infographics and videos
Incorporate how your hotel can provide them with the best access to these locations and experiences.
3. The articles are difficult to digest
Again, no one’s interested to read long articles with huge chunks of text, especially when you’re under travel and lifestyle niche. So do your guests a favor and make it more readable for online users:
- Use attention-grabbing and shareable headlines:
- Make it into a listicle
- Divide the content into subtopics with bold headers
- Use bullet points
- Keep sentences and paragraphs short
- Add a couple of images to break texts
- End the article with “call-to-action” statements and make social sharing buttons accessible.
4. Content materials sound robotic and promotional
Does your article sound like it was written by a hotel insider, hard-selling how perfect your hotel is? Well, if you’re so promotional and pushy, it might not be a hit.
Make your blog topics sound more human. Avoid complex words and excessive adjectives. Instead, use simple language and keep your tone friendly, personal, and conversational. Avoid speaking in third-person and write as if you’re talking to them. Like what I’m doing right now: directly talking to you.
5. Failing to establish your brand image and features
Just because travelers prefer informative blog posts doesn’t mean you’ll stop promoting your brand. You can still give value and information to your readers while incorporating your brand image in the content.
Have a healthy mix of informative blog posts and articles or news for promotion. You can include the following topics:
- Hotel’s upcoming events
- Behind the scenes with key members of your staff
- Customer Stories
- Interviews with local businesses, experts, and influencers
- Virtual hotel tour
- Interesting facts about the hotel
- Health and safety protocols, including COVID-19 measures
- Health and wellness packages
6. Falling short on the technical aspects
Now that we’re done talking about the creative aspects, it’s time to focus on some technical aspects that will help make your content shine. From website design to search engine optimisation (SEO), a technical foundation ensures your content can easily be found and read by your target audience.
One of the best ways to leverage your content is to improve your SEO strategies.
- Do keyword research (using SEMRush or Google Ads) and find geo-targeted keywords that a large number of people search for
- Incorporate these keywords in your content, headers, SEO title, and meta description
- Optimize your “Google My Business” (GMB) ranking
- Use catchy and shareable headlines
- Build a network of backlinks
Working with a reliable digital marketing agency is a cost-efficient way to reach your goals.
7. Posting the articles and calling it a day
No matter how beautiful your blog posts are, no one’s going to read them if you simply post them on your website and not do anything about them.
Share them on your social media accounts and other publications. Have a list of your previous patrons and send them email newsletters. Work with a digital marketing agency to turn your content into a medium for increasing website traffic and conversion, ranking better in the search results, and broadening brand awareness.
Author Bio: Carmina Natividad is a web content writer during the day and a foodie, musician, coffee connoisseur, and plant mom when her day shift is over. She enjoys sharing her insights about blogging, web design, SEO, and other forms of digital marketing. To know more about digital marketing, check out the blogs of SPRINT DIGITAL Agency Dublin.
Blogging Blunders: 7 Mistakes A Hotel Can Make When Writing A Blog Post
